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If you arent paying attention to the unfolding Aereo case, you should be. It will have industry-changing consequences if not now, in the not-so-distant future. Why? For those unfamiliar, Aereo is a New York City-based startup that, at a rate of $12 a month, promises to stream over 20 channels of local, broadcast television to consumers in the New York area.

As to how this works? Aereo essentially uses arrays of tiny TV antennas to capture broadcasts over the public airwaves (most networks have been forced by standards to update to high-def) and then transmits the signal to customers, who can rent out their own individual (tiny!) antennas. Of course, that signal is limited, as users are only able to stream one broadcast channel at a time. But, that signal comes streaming over the Web straight to you on any of your web-enabled devices.

Of course, as exciting as miniature TV antennas in the cloud may sound, the idea didnt sit well with the major broadcast networks. In theory, Aereo raised $20 million pre-launch from IAC, Barry Diller and others because it expected legal push-back. Last week, the broadcast networks met expectations, filing two lawsuits and an injunction meant to not only prevent Aereo from launching, but also to require it to pay damages for violating the Copyright Act. The broadcasters filing the lawsuit include pretty much every major broadcast TV network one would care to mention. (You can find the lawsuit on Scribd here.)

In a somewhat similar approach to Slingbox, Aereo assumes it can get around legal barriers because its just tuning into live TV, not re-broadcasting it without permission (which would be summarily illegal), and is licensing one TV antenna per-person, to be streamed one broadcast channel at a time. Not on-demand content for mass consumption, which would be a no-no in this case. So, upon news of the lawsuits, Aereo promptly responded with a denial, saying that the broadcasters lawsuits did not have any merit, essentially the equivalent of thank you very much, well see you in court.

After reporting Aereos response to the lawsuits, we received a number of tweets basically saying of course theyre going to get sued, what were they thinking? While it may seem like a fools errand, Aereo is not the first startup to go down this road, nor will they be the last. Many of its predecessors have been sued out of existence by those very same broadcasters. But the stakes are high enough to be worth it, and Aereo is closer than those that have come before it to a model that could win in court.

When you get right down to it, the airwaves that television broadcasters use to transmit are public property. To oversimplify, the government allowed private radio to broadcast over our airwaves to serve the public convenience and necessity, according to the The Radio Act of 1927. That right was given (not charged) to television broadcasters in licenses as part of the Communications Act of 1934. So it should be OUR right, should it not? Not exactly.

Things have gotten more complicated since, but fast forward to today, and cable networks are requiring millions of dollars to have their broadcasts transmitted. Naturally, the major TV broadcasters want some of the pie too, and have been demanding retransmission fees be paid by those cable, satellite, and telecom providers and winning. As Daniel Frankel of paidContent has pointed out, these retransmission fees have become a big part of network broadcasters bottom lines.

Many of the cable networks are (in the big picture) hanging on by a thread, and so companies like Aereo represent a major threat to these bottom lines, which is why they fight them tooth-and-nail based on the old retransmission without consent argument. Whats more, being the holders of the governments (qua publics) license to public airwaves, both local and national outlets/networks have a big voice on Capitol Hill. They are a public service, they are massive, and so the government wants nothing to do with someone holding them up at gunpoint.

In relation to Aereo, one could consider the example of TiVo, which records live television for later viewing or, tweak the language, for later re-broadcast. TiVo had to deal with legal issues when it first came on the scene, and then was of course eclipsed once cable companies were able to offer their own DVRs.

But what about the Internet? What happens now that TV content is starting to be captured on cable network cloud systems that allow viewers to capture, and rebroadcast live TV through their DVRs? Interestingly, Cablevision was able to defend its remote DVR network in court (against, who else? Broadcasters!) by saying that it was the same thing consumers had been doing for years themselves (taping live television, recording the radio) just moved to the cloud.

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Aereo Actually Has A Shot At Beating The Broadcast Networks

AFP/Hanover

Internet players are set to make a big splash at the worlds biggest IT fair opening in Germany yesterday, likely to widen the events appeal from a traditional tech fair to pure technology. While CeBIT, held in Hanover, tends to focus on the business side of technology, it has been overshadowed recently by the gadget wizardry unveiled at other showcases in Las Vegas, Berlin or Barcelona. Its not the attendance figures that count but the contracts which are signed, Reinhold Umminger, vice-president of CeBITs organising company, stressed, ahead of the March 6-9 fair in the northern German city. But the Internet with all its new possibilities looks set to muscle in on this years event with some big hi-tech names due to attend after having long skipped Hanover on the annual calendar of technology events. South Koreas Samsung, Japans Sharp are due to return. Microsoft, the IT giant which has just launched the test version of a new generation of its Windows operating system, Windows 8, will all also be represented. And the business networking website Xing will attend for the first time. Google chief Eric Schmidt delivered the official opening speech late yesterday, alongside German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, whose country is guest of honour. Schmidt cast a science-fiction vision of the future as the worlds top tech fair opened. Think back to Star Trek, or my favourite the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Much of what those writers imagined is now possible, said Schmidt. Translating .. voice recognition, electronic books. The people who predict that intelligent robots, virtual reality or self-driving cars will soon be commonplace are right, he added. Governments will be able to spot the economic makings of a crisis before they happen and doctors will be able to accurately predict the outbreak of disease before anyone feels it, predicted Schmidt. Declaring the fair officially open, Chancellor Angela Merkel returned to this theme of managing trust, saying it was especially important among world leaders as they battled to solve the global economic crisis. Dilma Rousseff, the president of Brazil, this years partner country at the CeBIT, expressed the hope that technology, when put to human interests, can certainly produce a true revolution for the well-being of the people at large. Among other likely highlights is new software that shows in real time what is causing excitement on the Web by reflecting on screen the themes most discussed by 150mn sources including social networks. During the fair, tech giants Samsung, Sharp, Microsoft, Google and Facebook will be showing off the latest ultra-thin tablet computers and the smartphones of the future for work as well as futuristic, weird and wacky gadgets for fun. Among the highlights is a robot that can make your lunch and a car that can change its length to slot into tricky parking spaces. Others include a virtual eraser for wiping out traces of potentially embarrassing mistakes on the Internet, a system for protecting smartphones from eavesdropping and a mobile device for asthmatics to assess the air quality. Cloud computing, which allows social networks and companies to make use of files and applications based on the providers servers via the Internet, rather than on their own servers, is again set to be a hot topic at CeBIT. And against the backdrop of Germanys mighty automobile industry, Audi will be showing off cars that boast an Internet connection. But CeBIT, above all, is about doing business, Umminger said which accounts for why it enjoys stable figures for both visitors and exhibitors. Some 80 percent of the 4,200 exhibitors are technology business representatives. The rest is shared by exhibits devoted to technology for governments and other bodies of public administration, private individuals and a more futuristic area focused on research. Under the banner Managing Trust - Confidence and Security in the Digital World, the fair will address concerns about lost or pirated data at both the private and professional levels. We debated for a long time over whether security was a sexy enough theme, Umminger said. And we concluded that yes (it was), because it concerns everyone.

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Internet giants muscle in on the world’s biggest IT exhibition

Obama's new plan lacks teeth by leaving out a "do not track" requirement

Jewel Samad / AFP / Getty Images

President Barack Obama speaks during the AIPAC Policy Conference on March 4, 2012 in Washington, DC.

Cohen is the author of Nothing to Fear: FDR's Inner Circle and the Hundred Days that Created Modern America

This has been a tough few weeks for privacy rights on the Internet. Google changed its privacy policy so it can combine the information it collects from different sources including gmail, searches, and web browsing to make a more complete dossier on who we are and what we do online. And the Wall Street Journal reported that Google and other online advertising companies have been bypassing the privacy settings of people who use Safari, the popular Apple web browser.

(MORE: New Google Privacy Policy May Violate European Law)

In the middle of these privacy blow-ups, the Obama administration announced a new set of online privacy policies a 62-page document called Consumer Data Privacy in a Networked World: A Framework for Protecting Privacy and Promoting Innovation in the Global Digital Economy. The White House has the right intentions, but it is not clear that these policies will have the teeth necessary to effectively protect peoples online privacy.

Its no great secret what the fighting over online privacy is about. Many Internet users want to be able to browse the Internet, use search engines, and view websites without anyone keeping a record of it. People do a lot of things online that they may want to keep secret for example, looking up symptoms of diseases (which health insurance companies may consider in writing coverage) and visiting non-mainstream political sites (which the government might want to know about).

When technology companies keep track of online activity, privacy problems radiate out in all directions. These companies could sell the data to people who will do harmful things with it including employers, who could use it to vet potential hires. This kind of data can easily end up in the hands of the government, which can subpoena it from the tech companies and suddenly, we are living in a Big Brother state.

(MORE: Can You Be Fired For Your Genes?)

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Will We Ever Get Strong Internet Privacy Rules?

GENEVA (Reuters) - Within three months of the launch of the Internet "pornography" domain ".xxx," 10 cases have been launched against Web pirates registering sites on it using the names of reputable companies and people, insiders said on Monday.

Sources at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) reported that among complainants to its dispute resolution system over .xxx -- usually called dot-triple x -- were banks, a jewelry business and an online shopping operation.

One individual complaint, against a site called femjoy.xxx, was brought by someone named George Streit, according to WIPO's dispute website. But the sources could not say if this was George Strait, the U.S. country music singer. WIPO officials could also not confirm whether the slightly different spelling was a typographical error.

WIPO, whose Director General Francis Gurry reported on Monday that cases of Web piracy, commonly called cybersquatting, rose 2.5 percent last year involving a record 4,781 sites with nearly 90 percent resolved in favor of complainants.

Many world-famous personalities, such as film star Tom Cruise and soccer player Wayne Rooney, and major corporations and brand names like Barclays Bank and Nestle, have in the past won cybersquatting cases in WIPO.

But these have all been brought against owners of sites registered under well-known and long-established domains such as dot-com, dot-int and dot-org, or the national suffixes identifying countries, including France's dot-fr.

Cyberquatters often register at a nominal fee using commonly known names or brands with the aim of selling them at a profit to the real name-owners. But they also use misleading sites to attract Web surfers to their own products or services.

Dot-triple x came into operation on December 6, 2011, after years of debate within the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), on how to control the spread of pornography on the Web and make it manageable.

AID TO PARENTS

Supporters of the idea of a special domain argued that it would enable parents and employers to control more easily the sites to which their children and employees had access by cutting off a single domain rather than separate sites.

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Porn domain on Internet touches alarm buttons

The White House is following the lead of the European Union in advocating for new Internetprivacy laws which put consumers interests ahead of those of cyber-businesses, policy analysts told The Daily Caller.

According to a report released last week by the Obama administration, Internet browserpurveyors are using tracking technology to monitor consumers online behavior and lists of thewebsites they visit. That information is resold to marketers who send targeted, customized ads to the consumers computers or smartphones.

The new Internet privacy principles announced last week by the administration are intendedto lead to new laws protecting the public from some privacy-averse policies of companies likeApple, Google, Microsoft and Facebook.

This administrations proposal asks Congress to codify the new rights, which include grantingthe federal government more police power. The Federal Trade Commission would beempowered with direct enforcement authority to ensure consumer data privacy, according tothe strategy.

Overall, the Obama proposal includes seven principles to protect consumer privacy online, WhiteHouse aides told reporters last week in a telephone briefing.

The proposed rules would also include an enforceable code of conduct that Internet companieswould have to comply with, or face litigation or civil penalties, under the expanded FTC power.That agencys power is currently more limited.

A statute that allows the FTC to enforce the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights directly wouldprovide flexibility and permit the FTC to address emerging privacy issues through specificenforcement actions governed by applicable procedural safeguards, the White House said in itsreport.

The Obama administration proposal mimics policy ideas being put forth in Europe, DarrenHayes, a computer forensics and security expert at Pace University in New York, told TheDC.

The online privacy and data protection laws are aimed at providing a shield to consumersin Europe from unsavory marketing practices, Hayes said. Legal journals in the U.S. haveadvocated the European approach for years, he said, claiming its regulations were moresophisticated than the wild west mentality that has prevailed in U.S. Internet culture since the 1990s.

The administration and observers are referring to the proposal informally as the Do Not Trackmeasure.

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White House follows EU’s lead with new Internet ‘rules of the road’